OVP: The Judge (2014)

Film: The Judge (2014)
Stars: Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jeremy Strong, Billy Bob Thornton
Director: David Dobkin
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actor-Robert Duvall)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

There are bad movies that are obviously bad.  You see something like I, Frankenstein and you know from the beginning that the heavy-handed drama is supposed to be truly terrible.  It's basically a giant blockbuster that is thrown out in January in the hopes that something sticks and the lack of options force you into a theater. There are, however, subtler ways to create a truly terrible movie.  You can hire a bunch of great or good actors to fill up your screen with giant speeches, trying to coast off their (considerable) star charisma even though they're giving hammy, over-baked performances that don't actually tell us anything real about the characters.  You can put together an implausible and idiotic series of events than any sane person would be able to prevent, and try to write off stupidity as "stubbornness" and make otherwise intelligent people do a series of dumb things so that you can fill up 140 minutes of screen time (you can also go about eighty minutes longer than you needed to considering how much care you put into the supporting players).  You can have an ending that is not only not earned, but flies in the face of the rest of the picture.  And to add insult to injury, you can give the film a title so generic it will be within a Wal-Mart dumpster within six months time, guaranteed.  That would be a truly terrible movie no matter how many Oscar nominees you shove into the credits, and that's what The Judge is.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film doesn't really need an overview of the plot.  If you saw the trailer you know exactly what to expect: a cocksure lawyer named Hank (Downey) goes home to see his long estranged but respected father (Duvall) and then the father is tried for murdering a man he once let off easy, who then went on to murder a young woman (that one wrong decision that haunts him over 42 years).  The film proceeds with increasing silliness, with it looking more and more apparent that Duvall did in fact do it, but isn't willing to save himself by admitting he's largely incompetent (he's undergoing aggressive chemotherapy treatments and his memory is starting to fade pretty rapidly) and by using his son's lawyer tricks.  In the end the son throws away his "soulless" career as a criminal defense attorney and decides to pursue his high school girlfriend.

The film is ridiculous for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the plot is stupid, and on occasion offensive.  We see Downey's Hank constantly outsmarting everyone in his path-even the prosecutor (Thornton) who is supposed to be his "equal" never actually does anything that surprises Downey.  These sorts of lawyers aren't particularly interesting, and it's largely why the legal drama has become truly played out-we've seen every iteration of Perry Mason, the unbeatable lawyer, on screen and television, and there's nothing compelling to say about it anymore.  Until there's actually something meaningful happening or the focus isn't just on the case at hand, when the ace-lawyer is in his "toughest case ever" that he still rarely stumbles through, it's time to put this plot to rest.  Or at least make it seem plausible-at the end of the day, no one has as much integrity as Duvall's character does in this film and still clearly intended to kill a man (is there really any other answer to the "guilty" or "not guilty" verdict?).  Having a client this is totally pious but offs some man due to a twenty-year-old crime based on that guy saying something cruel at a gas station?  It doesn't seem in character, and part of a film like this needs to be grounded in reality.

The film is weirdly shot, too.  There's a lot of recurring looks at specific places, trying to make us realize just how small this town is, but they're always from the same angle (we're always looking at that giant waterfall out of Vera Farmiga's window)-couldn't you mix it up a bit?  And not that I'm completely complaining here, but what was with the weird fascination with Robert Downey Jr's buttocks?  I have never seen a film so obviously exploit a physical aspect of an actor's body without at least mentioning that they're doing it (it was so apparent that I actually had someone in the theater yell something at the screen when he was on the bike).  Seriously-if you haven't seen this film, and are forced to, count how many times the camera centers on Robert Downey Jr.'s posterior.

His clear devotion to the gym aside, has anyone else basically put RDJ in the same camp as Johnny Depp at this point?  I'm pretty much over him.  I really enjoyed Tropic Thunder and thought he was just aces in the first Iron Man movie-that cocky actor routine truly was a great find for him, but it's become a bit of a yawn, and when he clearly thinks he's "stretching" himself (just because it's a drama doesn't mean it's any good, or remotely as good as Tropic Thunder or Iron Man), that's a sign of an actor who has spent too much time diving into pools filled with gold, and not focused enough on his craft.  Downey has a charm that is undeniable, but part of his charm is "knowing" that he's good.  When he's not, that becomes extremely off-putting, and makes you sort of hate his character, which is a big hindrance when he's the hero.

The rest of the cast, to be fair, isn't much better.  Vera Farmiga and Vincent D'Onofrio are both playing cardboard cutouts of human beings, and are genuinely bad in some scenes.  The writing doesn't help ("I've always loved you" only works when Ralph Fiennes is carrying you up a desert cliff), but still-these actors should be able to sell better than this, even when the screenplay doesn't give a rat's ass about them.  Robert Duvall is a character that the film does care about, and is certainly in the conversation for the Oscars, though this feels more like it's mandatory bait because the performance features a living legend giving great speeches and having to be physically uncomfortable onscreen.  There's nothing actually special about this performance aside from the fact that it's Robert Duvall, who is a wonderfully beloved thespian.

And before I end this, can we also stop the podunk, everyone in rural America is a bunch of hicks plotline that seems to hit all of these sorts of films?  The scene where everyone recounts their bumper stickers is supposed to be funny, but it comes off as condescending and mean in terms of Downey, as all of his prejudices about people in small towns turn out to be right (much like Alexander Payne's Nebraska, another film I couldn't stand).

Those are my thoughts on this extremely poor movie-what are yours?  Did anyone actually like it, or at least find something to enjoy in Downey or Duvall?  Can anyone think of a way to make the legal drama a bit less formulaic?  And will Duvall or Newman manage to get this movie an Oscar nomination?  Share your thoughts in the comments!